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Friday, 4 November 2011

Foji - Sajnaa

Foji, the singer who staged a bhangra flash mob in Birmingham, has released the video for his new single. Sajnaa is a love song from his album Daafa Ho Ja and was written and produced by Foji himself.

Thanks to the bhangra flash mob at the Bull Ring, Foji’s last video Pumbeeri won the award for best video at the Brit Asia TV awards. The pressure must have been on to create something great for his next video. But Sajnaa is slower and more mellow than Pumbeeri, so a fast paced video would not have worked.

The video for Sajnaa is simple. It shows Foji talking a long walk. First in a market, then in a park and then he strolls around London. His walk is intersected by shots of a woman also walking around. There are no glitzy effects, no back up dancers getting drunk in a club and no costume changes. The simplicity of the video could be mistaken for pretension, but I don’t think the bhangra industry has enough time and depth to be pretentious.

The mystery woman and Foji obviously don’t go for walks in the park very often. Foji wears bright white trainers, which cannot have stayed white for long after trampling down a muddy path. The woman must have been feeling cold without a jacket to cover up and I don’t think she could walk very far in skimpy flats.

I can’t work out if Foji is in love with, or has recently broken up with the woman as he takes his own life into his hands. Foji walks in the middle of a busy London road and crosses one traffic filled street like they do in India. You only walk down the middle of a London road if you want to get hit by a motorbike and have a death wish.

Overall this is a nice simple video and it makes a refreshing change to those set in a club. But the simplicity also means I will get bored of it after a few views and it will probably not win Foji any more awards.